


Whitelaw and the Huntsman

by callmeclovis



Category: Actor RPF, Star Trek RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-01-13 12:01:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1225537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmeclovis/pseuds/callmeclovis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Second born and male was never a position one desired in the matriarchal monarchy and certainly not one that Chris asked for.  Delving into the woods to take up residence in an abandoned cottage was the better option... Until the huntsman comes home from a long trip to find a runaway prince in his bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

It wasn’t exactly the type of adventure Chris was looking for, but then again he wasn’t looking for an adventure. He found himself tangled in a losing fight with the thorned brush, emerging with only a few scrapes and cuts along his princely face. Princely, illustrious, distinguished, esteemed: synonyms he was looking to escape perhaps with more success than his last outings. He chuckled to himself despite the minuscule thorns determined to make the depths of his palms their new home when he remembered the first time the urge to either disappear into the faceless anonymity or jump from the highest tower in the Keep over took his attentions.

He was reading, as was regular, when the duties of being groomed into the perfect husband subsided and nearly nodded off nestled in the opened window with a worn copy of one of his favorite books in his hands. Thankfully, the jolt of is head falling to his chest woke him before the plummet to the unforgiving ground woke him a little more rudely. Fate seemed keen on his decent as the Princess pushed into his little nook and smothered him with the best kind of kisses. Raspberries and tickle fights near the open window caused Katie's ever constant and dreadfully attentive attendant's fave to sour. "Katherine." Mylle's frown lines were spidering down her face. Chris knew what followed so he quickly straightened up and pushed his sister off. She was bigger and stronger but when it came to angering Mylle, who was quick to anger with Chris and a little more lenient with the future Queen, he didn't play around.

“Christopher, what use is reading to a man?” Katherine looked genuinely curious when she rested her chin on his shoulder, looking over the words she had been taught by tutors to read where Chris had to listen at closed doors and coax a few words from any young daughter of the Court. It was as if she actually believed that all the horse shit that the tutors put in his head every day about standing straight and attending his wife adequately was all that his head would ever be any good for. Sometimes it was hard to believe that only eight years stood between them, eight years and still if Chris had been on the elder side of those years he would be withheld from the throne simply by his sex. Male. Second class. Nothing more than a whore to be sent to a Lady or god forbid a treaty with a foreign princess who could not even speak the common tongue in marriage, but that’s only what he thought on his bad days when he felt as if the comforts of his bed were trying to strangle him. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so terribly bad, maybe he would be married off to a woman that had all of her teeth like his mother and sister, and would let him read her writing or any literature for that matter.

“Nothing,” he replied easily with a shrug. “I was only looking.” He snapped the book closed and climbed out of the window and back into his high gilded bird cage wondering what it would be like if he didn’t have to keep his wings clipped because of the thing between his legs.

°°°

Nothing. Chris found that most of the forest outlying their home had been filled with absolutely nothing and then suddenly filled with the royal guard believing yet another story about getting lost or turned around in his easily mislead masculine ways. How could one expect a male to navigate anywhere without the female intuition? The problem with his previous escape plans he found was that he didn’t give himself enough time to run before someone found his quiet existence missing from his lessons or morning meal. This time was different, no evening lessons and plenty of food hoarded for the trip and a well-worn map kept close to his thundering heart that mixed up his feet and sent him flying into the vicious thorn bush he had just escaped.

He had gone too far, run too fast, adrenaline pumping and crossed rivers and doubled back to mask his scent. Which incidentally got him fucking lost with no real landmark in the deep green and browns blurred together in the forest’s heart, the humming of the animals and tree’s hearts buzzing around him, deafening his senses to all other hints of where he might be other than how damp and uncomfortable his feet were.

Maybe this wasn’t one if his better ideas, he thought definitely not for the last time in the months to come.

Chris ended up kipping it up in a tree, his sack of supplies tied to the thick branches along with his body as he watched the darkness grow and spread over the ground. He had never seen darkness like this. He always assumed darkness spread from the sky as it did from his window when the yolkly yellow of the sun slipped past the horizon and yet here he was nestled into the heavy limbs of an old tree watching the light drain from the bottom up. Crawling over the ground before inching up into the sky, it was only contested by the silver of moonlight shining down just far enough to touch Chris’s palms. The faint glow of the moon could not reach the ground and left it to the darkness’s whims and wiles, a compromise to swaddle him in the light, keeping the illusion of perhaps being curled in bed with the candle flickering over his body as he drifted to sleep.

The problem was that even knowing he had to make the food last with his less than completely thought out plan of escape, Chris was not a clever man when hungry. He spent most of the day with one hand in his rations and the other wiping the remnants from his stubbly mouth and far past ruined clothes. He was almost positive he looked as unkempt as any prince had ever deemed to be, dirt and dust caked his boots, sweat congealing on his back and neck, leaves and twigs vied for a more untraditional resting place in his muddy brown blond hair, and he was sporting quite a few new bumps and bruises since this journey began.

He was senseless and useless in the wild as most would expect princes to be. He did not tread quietly through the underbrush and he didn’t think to check for predators or other animals who might be using it when he came across a shallow stream before stripping down and wading into the thigh deep water. He closed his eyes and let the cool moving water ebb and flow over his body, relaxing into it and lazily running his hands through his hair and body as if to bat off the sweat and dirt. He pulled himself to shore reluctantly and felt his body crush the small tufts of grass as he laid in the sun, letting the glaring rays dry his body as he drifted in and out of sleep. It was really a miracle at all that he survived the trek through the woods, his rebellion taking his step by step by step further away from his family and their kingdom.

On the fourth day, when he had run out of food it began to hit him that this might be a permanent ordeal. The hounds might not actually find him, the guards would not drag him back to his birdcage. He was struck by the sudden tidal wave of freedom before getting hit in the gut by the responsibilities that followed. He was lost in the woods, alone, with no food, and all the etiquette lessons of a Lord but not an inkling as to how to start a fire.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Chris rubbed his eyes, sleeping in trees was starting to lose its luster.

"There has to be some kind of _something_ in this forest." Chris sighed desperately and slumped into a crook of tree roots, the uneven bark digging against his scalp and if he was going to be completely honest he missed home.

He missed the library and his sister’s hunting mastiffs and most of all the thick slabs of meat that accompanied dinner. His stomach gave an angry twitch in protest at the thought.

Three days. Three days without food and he could feel the ever present hunger bite and gnaw at his stomach. He wasn't used to going hungry, the kitchen had always supplied an abundance for every meal and when it hadn't, sneaking into the cupboards was all too easy with his partner in thievery at his side. Katherine, Katie, Kat.

He dug the heel of his palm into his eye socket, not going to get emotional over silly childhood scamperings, he felt childish enough lost in an escapable forest. In the days he spent butting his head against his confines, he never expected freedom to turn out like this. He had entertained the idea of settling into the wild, away from the pressures of his station in society, his beard that had always been a mark of masculinity and shame grown out with pride, living off the land, and drafting his thoughts in his scrawling script on the journal he had plucked from Katherine’s bedside table.

It was back on the third day he realized he had not only left the ink and a writing implement but his reading stone as well. Even if he did manage to make it to another town, he could not read without the magnifying stone for his poor eyesight.

He tried to lift himself up onto his legs, quickly sitting back down after the world began to tilt in as if he had been dipping into the wine stores again. Although as far as pass times went, he would recommend the drunken stupor over his wailing stomach any day. Maybe he would rest, just for a little while, not for very long, he managed to convince himself as his eyelids began to droop.

When he finally blinked awake it was dark, that terribly pitch darkness he had seen sweep across the forest floor too many times for comfort. He had read in bestiaries about what preyed the dark, heard the soldiers and patrol guard tell tales of warg, pard, and dispa stalking and slithering and crawling and creeping through the night with only the whisper of danger in women’s hearts to guide them to safety. He couldn’t find his hands in the darkness, waving them in front of his face, even squinting didn’t help.

“Oh, fuck me.” He heaved himself up onto his legs, feeling blindly around the tree he had slumped against. He tried to remember if he could climb up it easily until he heard the soft pad of paws against the forest floor followed by a low, threatening snarl, terror shot through him.

Chris’s mind automatically went to the dire wolves he had seen once in market, caged they had not seemed fearsome but Chris remembered their huge bodies, bigger than he was at the time and surely even now  larger, even if he was a grown man. He shook his head, clearing his thoughts as he tried to listen again, focusing on where exactly the wolf was.

With the sudden crack of a heavy paw on a fallen branch, Chris broke into a sprint in the opposite direction, his instincts overriding his brain telling him he could never outrun a wolf and should be finding a tree to climb up or standing his ground to scare it off. It was dark and he was starving and he didn’t know what else to do but run and run fast and he just wanted it all to go away.

He couldn’t hear anything, his heart pounding in his ears, breath short and quick, in and out of his lungs as his brain over powered all the weariness lack of food had brought onto him. He was by no means out of shape, it was one of the qualities ladies expected in their lords to possess, something about muscles being far more appealing than a gut. He had never had to actually put these muscles to the test before though and started to feel a burn deep in his thighs, a stitch just under his ribs sending spikes of pain through his thoracic cavity. What good was it to be able to name all his body parts if he couldn’t get them to work to protect his life?

God, this was it, he was going to be run down by wolves all because he took a nap.

His face made impact the side of something very solid and most definitely not a tree. He could taste the copper tang in his mouth, must have busted a lip. He felt franticly along what could only be a wall for anything that would either let him in or help him climb. He breathed a heavy sigh of relief as his hand came in contact with a handle. Finally. Some good luck.

He began to pull the door open before his body was slammed against it, pinning him between the wood and a snarling dire wolf. Searing pain ripped through his forearm just as he beat the wolf off, opening the door and slamming it behind him as the warmth of blood seeped through his shirt.

He braced himself against the thick wood as the wolf growled and pushed. She had to get bored eventually, surely there was easier prey in the middle of spring than a resisting prince.

He was right, she did lose interest in him and the scratching at the wood dissipated. It was just as dark in the house as it was outside, possibly more so as it ached with the fear of the unknown. He was loth to move away from the door but he couldn’t stay there all night, his arm was aching and needed tending.

He winced as he brought it close to his chest, struggling to get to his feet with only one arm and his body crying out with exhaustion. His legs felt like a baby colt’s that had just taken its first steps, shaky and unsure of how this whole walking thing worked. He, of course, clipped his hip on a dresser within the first few moments of searching. That was going to bruise, he sighed and felt around for a drawer, knowing there must be some kind of candle or tinderbox in here somewhere.

“Yes,” Chris smiled as he felt the unmistakable touch of flint and a fire striker. Whoever had kept this drawer was incredibly neat. He closed it with his unbruised hip and felt around for a hearth on his hands and knees, at least no one was around to see him crawling around like an infant in the dark. Hearth. Middle of the room. That should be simple enough, but apparently not. When he finally did locate the damn thing Chris lit it quickly with only minor trouble from his injured arm.

“Um, hello.” A distrustful cat suddenly was face to face with him, green eyes blinking cynically out of pitch black fur and sizing him up as if he were a mouse who looked too sickly to eat. “I’m Chris, mind if I bunk here?” The cat just hissed at him and stalked back under a fur laden bed, judging him not worth his time.

Home sweet home.


	3. Chapter 3

Within the first few minutes of exploration, he had discovered that this house was not traditionally arranged. There were two rooms other than the main, rather spacious room where the hearth and bed were. Even though there two other rooms, the woman who lived here used the main as bed chambers as well as a kitchen.

The first room held nothing abnormal, a store room with salted meats, dried herbs, cheeses, vegetables, and fruits in barrels, although the excessive amount of oil was just odd for a woman to have for obvious reasons.

What really confused Chris the most is the second room could have been used for a bed and all the accessories that came in a bed chamber, but was filled with three small nests and food bowls obviously meant for pets. What kind of person opted to sleep in the main room when a perfectly good room went to their pets?

Chris poured water over his wound, groaning at the pain pulsing up his arm before dabbing some concoction of herbal ointments he had found in the storeroom liberally into the deep holes the wolf’s teeth had left him with. Definitely going to scar, but at least he had the care to keep it from getting riddled with disease. It could have been worse, his dominant arm was unaffected and that’s all that really mattered.

Cat, as he had so affectionately begun to call the black creature who lived under the bed and kept him under a watchful green eye. He kept an extensive stock of everything Chris touched and was ready to tattle on him to his master when she got home. Even when he gave the already vermin filled cat scraps from his plate he had this air of displeasure about him. Chris was just glad for the company, even if the conversation was decidedly one sided.

He really did try to remember that this was someone else’s home. It held their cat who definitely had not warmed up to him, their tweezers he was using to keep some kind of control over his eyebrows, their food he was filling his shrunken stomach with, their bandages, their medicinal ointments, and most importantly their bed he was sleeping in.

 “So, Cat. I see your master has a journal. She wouldn’t happen to have a reading stone anywhere?” Chris knew the answer before he asked. He had rummaged through all the drawers, disturbing the meticulously organized contents of every single one. Extremely enthralled when a journal had made its appearance. He ended up squinting at the leather bound pages, holding it only centimeters from his face to read the words before giving up. He missed his reading stone, he had saved up the little secret coins that were so few and far between for what seemed an eternity to purchase it. He would have never been permitted to purchase one on his own. The clear stone was small and mounted in a beautiful silver wrought design to be worn as a pendant around his neck.  He huffed, feeling the ebbing frustration of words he could not see laid before him.

There was entertainment to be found elsewhere as he contented himself with inspecting the small objects left between the pages. He held the delicately pressed and dried flowers between his thumb and forefinger, twirling them before setting each one back between the pages he had plucked it from.

There were other tokens in the pages, a note that was not in the same defining script as the rest of the notebook, a small ribbon that was so threadbare Chris dared not touch it lest it fall to pieces, and a few more odds and ends that he assumed held sentimental value to the woman who lived here.

Woman.

He just couldn’t help but notice telling things throughout the home. The bed smelled musky and masculine, a razor along with what looked like a homemade concoction of shaving lubricant, the odd discovery of way too much oil for cooking purposes, larger clothing, he just couldn’t help but take stock of the little hints that perhaps a man lived here. Which was ludicrous. A man, living on his own with such a well-stocked home, owning property, not only surviving but thriving without a woman or township supporting him? Chris shook his head, it was simply unheard of or too good to delude oneself to believe it true. She must have a husband. One that smelled very nice, he decided as he smiled and curled up in the heavy furs, burying his face in the down pillow. Whoever this woman was, she had a very fine taste in the comforts of life.

The days passed slow and lazily until spring bled into summer and the days blurred together. Wake up, break his fast, trudge to the river, trudge back and put water in Cat’s bowl before collapsing back into bed, wake up, eat midday meal, explore and hike, take a dip in the river, evening meal with Cat just happening to weave between his legs as he ate and if scraps fell down to his reach neither of them mentioned it, make good use of the oil before falling asleep curled in the curiously musky furs until they smelled more of Chris than their previous inhabitant.

Rinse. Repeat daily as instructed.

He found it refreshing, the steady routine with his furry companion who was starting to sleep curled right next to his face even when it became too hot to sleep with more than one of the furs.

Chris had even begun to fill out more than he had been when he was only staying fit for aesthetic pleasure, defining ridges of muscle sloped down his arms and back, he noticed one night when he was definitely not checking himself in the mirror. He was hoping his hostess agreed and would keep him around if not for his enthralling personality then at least for how good he looked without his shirt on. He might have spent more time than was strictly necessary considering the life she lead here and how he would fit into it.

Maybe it was more than idle curiosity that got Chris all the way under the bed one afternoon, fingertips inching ever so slowly towards a black lacquered box. He was maybe perhaps kind of a smidgen obsessed with whoever lived here. She had horrible taste in pets but smelled so nice and also very single.

That fact he had determined mostly out of his own fantasies of a cute cabin couple in the woods, living out their days together with a demonic cat, and also that there simply weren't enough clothes here for two people. The clothes themselves gave no hint either way to gender or sex, all of them unisex if not a little large for a woman, even if they fit him comfortably.

Cat had hissed at Chris as he invaded his Domain of Underbed but only scampered to the other side of the room as Chris shooed the feline away, making his way under the bed frame. It was a tight fit, and he held the hope that there would be no spiders or bugs or crawly things in general to creep over him while he was practically immobile.

"Almost there... Just a little..." Chris strained, grinning as his hand finally gripped the box. "Yes!"

A loud, undeniably masculine grunt followed by incessant barks filled the house as the door swung open. "No don't do that, Noah. Yes, I realized you missed Harold. Stop, you're going to crush him." A frustrated groan was followed by an indignant yowl from Cat, well, Harold. Who even gave their animals named Harold and Noah?

“Skunk, I swear to god. We’ve been home for two seconds, you can’t go outside.” Skunk… Really?

Chris was suddenly met by a large, nosing wet muzzle invading his space, quickly followed by a smaller snout both barking and snarling at him. If they were trying to ensure Chris would never come out from under the bed, they had done their jobs well. He automatically brought his injured arm to his chest, trying to get further under the bed, squeezing in and trying to get friendly with the wall.

“Are there rats again? What is it?” The deep voice got closer and closer and maybe if Chris shut his eyes tight enough he would sink into the floor and cease existing.

“Back.” The dog’s muzzles stopped their nosing at the command, only to be replaced by two knees, and eventually two confused brown eyes.

“Do you want to explain who you are or why you’re under my bed first?” Chris’s mouth felt a little dry as he tried to answer and wiggle out from under the bed, of all the places to get caught of course it was the most awkward position possible, snooping and stuck under his bed.

“Christopher Whitelaw.” He left off his last name. He finally squeezed out from under the frame, standing toe to toe with the taller man. He wasn’t used to being the shorter of any pair, his height was something of an anomaly and had him towering at least a few inches over the average man. “I got lost and ran out of food. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“I’m Zach, Zachary Quinto.” Zachary was commanding, broad, and his dark brown eyes focused on Chris like he was equally the most enthralling and most boring thing in all existence, arching a thick eyebrow at him. “So you’ve not only been digging through my stores but also through my personal things?”

Chris opened his mouth to object but Zach only made a noise in the back of his throat, motioning to the black lacquered box still clutched in Chris’s good hand. “Hand it over, and we’ll see how badly that injury is before we have a real talk.”

Zach left him on the bed and went to shut the dogs in the kennel room with the nests. When he returned he was holding the ointment and bandages Chris had already made use of as well as a rag and water. He chuckled as he sat opposite him on the bed.

“I see you have made yourself at home.” He motioned around him to the ever present mess that seemed to accompany Chris wherever he lived before Zach unwrapped the bandages Chris had clumsily applied with his left hand. He winced at the sight of the bite mark marring his skin with deep red blotches surrounded by black bruising. “What did this?”

“Dire wolf. She was a loner, or at least her pack didn’t think I was worth chasing.” He studied Zach’s face, trying to discern exactly what kind of man he was. He didn’t quite fit any one box of a single man, he was not a widower obviously with no children and living in the forest, he was much too young to be a crone, and he hadn’t seen any signs of the devil in the house so not a practicing witch.

“Did you not think to climb a tree?” Zach spent most his time laughing at Chris’s expense in the next few moments. Everything from thinking he could out run a wolf to how he knew absolutely nothing about binding wounds. Chris took it as a friendly banter and dished it right back, throwing his kennel room in his face.

“What do you use them for anyway?” Chris said, Zach’s fingers turning his arm over and over, inspecting his work with gentle touches. He skimmed his fingertips up his bandages to his palm before patting it and setting it back in Chris’s lap.

“Hunting and company mostly. Noah, the alaunt and mastiff mutt, takes down the big prey too dangerous for me to use the bow on and Skunk, the lymer, tracks. They’re pretty helpful but they like to terrorize Harold.” He grinned and pushed his hair back out of his face. Zach continued before Chris could comment on how Harold was actually demon spawn and deserved to be terrorized.

“Are you planning on staying? I could care less what or where you’re running from, and I really don’t want to know. If you’re planning to stay, however, I do expect you to make yourself useful in one way or another.” Chris squinted at him, trying to discern exactly what exactly Zach wanted him to do.

“I don’t have anywhere else to go, but if you point me to the nearest town I could make it on my own.” Chris said defensively, he wasn’t going to be some burden on a man he had just met and subject himself to that wolfish grin that was too much to be directed at any one person.

“It’s five days to the next down at a good pace, if you know where you’re going." Heavy emphasis on the if, heavy hit below Chris's belt. "I could show you but I just got home and my dogs need rest, especially if there’s a wolf stalking around my home.” Zach shrugged. “You could stay, I’m not saying you have to work yourself to the bone, just pull your weight for all the shit you’re using.”

“And what would you have me do?” Chris asked, he was good at reading, sparring, writing, and eating. None of those things seemed too important in this situation.

“I’m sure we’ll figure something out.” The wolfish grin was back and Zach stood, beckoning him outside to clean and skin his kills, leaving Chris wondering exactly what he had landed himself in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to apologize profusely to Noah and Skunk for changing their breeds. I am so sorry you are just not hunting dogs, poor little babies.


	4. Chapter 4

Fuck Zach. No really, fuck him right his bearded, stupid face.

Chris’s back ached with how long he had been bent over, sweat rolling down his torso and the crevices of his knees, his shirt long since abandoned in favor of bare skin. He was damp everywhere.  

Strenuous activity was ungodly in this dry summer and Chris wasn’t exactly sure this didn’t count as slavery, his body was sore and complaining in all the wrong places. He just couldn’t find a position that was comfortable, every way he twisted and settled there would be a new driving pain radiating deep in his muscles. Muscles he hadn’t exactly needed to exert before Zach got ahold of him.

“I can literally feel the hatred pouring off of you. You should try some breathing exercises.” Zach laughed as he inspected Chris’s work over his shoulder, hands lingering where they shouldn’t. Which was anywhere within ten meters of Chris. It was way too hot to even consider being anywhere near another heat producing human, especially Zach who exuded warmth.

“Men's bodies aren’t made to be driven so hard. You are a sadist.” Chris spat back, emphasizing each word in his breathless huffs. Maybe if he worked it harder it would be over quickly and he could go wash off in the river with the dogs that were surely off somewhere getting just as dirty as he was under Zach’s careful tutelage.

“I’ve been doing this for years, Christopher. You are being infantile.” Chris could hear the eye roll and wondered how much longer he would have to keep going if he threw an elbow back accidentally into Zach’s solar plexus.

“You’re almost done, just a little deeper and we can go to the river. You’ve made this unnecessarily messy.” Zach crinkled his nose in that way he did with anything resembling filth. Chris was forbidden from cleaning after the first try since he was apparently ‘a menace with a proclivity for wasting time and cleaning materials’, and took more baths than he had in his entire life since he had started living with the huntsman.

“If you hadn’t insisted I could only learn by experiencing we wouldn’t be in this position.” Chris grumbled as he finished, wiping his hands on his pants.

Zach was right as much as he hated to admit it as often as he did, he made gardening much filthier than it possibly could be.  Herbs, tomatoes, lettuce, and strawberries were carefully nestled deep in the garden that was now Chris’s responsibility, paying for his room and board as it were.

There was something fulfilling about the dirt under his nails, the clean earthy smell as he worked the damp earth to produce food for them. His labor going into the survival of the household instead of being a dead weight for Zach to support.

Zach, who could skin and gut his spoils without flinching and not a moment later turn around and get onto Chris for accidentally kicking Noah who was just too large to not trip over. The man was made of contradictions down to his features, exemplified by the pale of his skin to the darkness captured in his hair and eyes.

“I’ll be expecting the peppers and potatoes to be taken care of when I get back from town.” Zach offered him a hand, already standing and looking as if he had not just spent the entire day tilling and working the land at Chris’s side, comparatively at least. Chris was sure he looked like he had just gotten dragged through a pig pin whereas Zach only had clumps of dirt smeared on his face from careless dirt covered hands and on his chest from where it had stuck to the sweat. Zach gave an ear splitting whistle for the dogs, who bounded alongside them on their way to wash off. He ignored the end of the sentence, already in denial about Zach leaving.

“I feel like I’ve been plowed over by horses.” Chris sighed as he washed himself in the river, the fast moving stream carrying his sweat and dirt far, far away from him and leaving him with cool water. He rolled his shoulders, cracking and stretching out his stiffened joints.

Noah decided that naked bath in slick mud with loose footing time is the best time to jump on him, licking his face wildly as he barely braced his legs in time for the impact of the furry cannonball.

“Complaining is unbecoming of you.” Zach ignored Chris’s general direction, the defined muscles of his back moving as fluidly as the water when he plucked Skunk up mid-doggy paddle.

It was always like this, Zach was made of casual touch and snide, flirting remarks until it came to the river.

The river where Zach refused the horse play Chris had become so used to he only realized it’s frequency with the sudden absence. He kept a measured distance between them and never purposefully turned his eyes towards him, even though he insisted bathing together. Especially with Chris injured and on the mend.

It definitely wasn’t because Zach was modest, Chris had seen more than enough of the curiously well-trimmed man, he had nothing left to imagine. Chris was a guy, what else was he supposed to do? Not compare and contrast and figure out exactly how different their proportions were? Apparently that’s what Zach thought, no rough housing, no secret glances, nothing, and Chris was left to wonder why until it hit him head on with the sun glaring down at his heat exhausted body. Zach was protecting his _virtue_.

“You do realize we’re both guys right?” Chris asked as he dried himself off right in Zach’s line of sight.

“The fact had escaped my notice, thank you for bringing it to my attention, Christopher. I had been worried I would trip and accidentally impregnate you.” Zach kept his eyes down as he dressed, ignoring the ever present delicacies of his house mate. “That also solves the mystery of where all my oil has been disappearing to.”

“I just meant that we sleep together. You don’t have to go out of your way to defend my honor or whatever you think you’re doing.” Chris felt a blush creep up his neck, what he did in his spare time when Zach was for sure nowhere near the cabin was his own business and none of Zach’s.

“I offered to make you a bed like Noah’s. You could actually fit in his now that I think about it and he could take your place in mine.” There wasn’t enough room in the house for another bed like Zach’s and Chris knew that was a sore subject, so naturally he brought it up, because that’s what all good friends do. Be total assholes. It wasn’t like he meant to be a jerk, it just happened sometimes. “There’s also room in the basement if you are so desperate for your own sleeping space.”

The basement, that wasn’t even technically a basement, was maybe a meter deep and more like a hiding hole than a place where any living thing would voluntarily go. It was dank and dirty and filled with spiders and creatures that made Chris’s skin crawl. Zach had him go down there once when Harold had gotten stuck under the house and he was too busy washing and salting meat for storage.

Chris had a panic attack, the crawling insects all over his body, the closed in space, his breaking point reached as he felt the fast scuttle of spider legs down his neck and had to have Zach come get him. He had spent the next half hour changing clothes until he he was absolutely sure no spiders or centipedes were left on him. Neither of them mentioned Zach's hands on him, calming him down, afterwards.

“Forget it.” Chris huffed, running a hand through his soaking wet hair and down to his well-groomed beard.

Zach had taught him how to tame after weeks of little irritated noises, as if Chris’s unkempt whiskers were personally offending him. Chris wasn’t complaining, if he did it wrong, Zach did it for him and there is little more pleasurable in life than getting one’s beard stroked and trimmed by the firm, meticulous hands of Zachary Quinto.

“Can I trust you to cook the food and not eat it all, Whitelaw?” Zach body checked Chris with his shoulder as they both tried to fit through the door at the same time. Chris swore to God if he knew that Zach was going to bring it up every two seconds he wouldn’t have eaten twice his share that first night together.

∙∙∙

The floor was littered with pelts, tanned and ready to be brought to town. Chris watched Zach make his way through them from their bed, separating them into two distinct piles, waiting to get comfortable until Zach had joined him. When he had finally decided which were too valuable to keep and which would now belong to Chris to be made into clothes for the winter, the bed sank with his weight and Chris tried to find an equal place between platonic cuddling and the ability to breathe.

Tomorrow he would begin the journey he had assured Chris he made quite often and would only be gone a fortnight, leaving Chris to care for Harold and Skunk while he was gone. Noah, who didn’t necessarily need to go on the trip, was going to be brought along.

Chris had an inkling that perhaps daddy was playing favorites but kept that to himself, glad to have some company that wouldn’t betray him in a moment’s notice, even if Harold had warmed up to him considerably.

He would be lying if he said he wasn’t dreading Zach leaving, it was a comfort having another human presence around and Zach knew when to give him space. It was easy, the rhythm they had perfected with each other, unspoken but ever present. Really, he liked how Zach complained about how tactile and clingy he was. He liked the way Zach ruffled the spikes the pillow had formed his hair into while he slept, and he liked the _air_ that Zach brought into their home. Zach, in the few weeks they had been growing accustomed to each other and the bickering and the drawing of personal boundaries that seemed more like faint suggestions now, had made this Chris’s home. With all the grumbling about dirt and filth and the first time Chris’s paranoia kicked into over drive when Zach called him Princess Whitelaw, it was home now. His home, with Zachary.

“Chris.” It was late, he should he asleep. They both should be asleep, Zach was leaving tomorrow and he had to have his rest if he was going to make good time. He wasn’t though, his breath was warm and lazy on the back on Chris’s neck and his arm tightened around his waist. “Could you stew a little quieter? Some of us have places to be before day break.”

Chris had lost count of the number of times they tried to find some way not to end up like this until they gave up. Zach complained about how it was too hot to sleep like this in the summer and Chris complained about being crushed by all the Zach, but neither of them tried too hard to fix it.

A feeble barricade had been put in place once that only succeeded in being kicked to the end of the bed. He met Zach with silence, only tracing the dark down of his hair and wondering how he had ended up so attached.

“You okay?” Zach’s arm tensed and a cumbersome nose was nuzzling into the back of his head, mussing his already hopeless hair.

“Do you think Noah could handle the wolf? If it came down to it?” Chris just came right out and said it, coyly dodging the meat of the matter was never his forte and the question had been stewing and bubbling inside of him until he felt like he might combust if he didn’t ask.

“We don’t even know if the wolf is still around, lone wolves don’t tend to stay in one place.” Zach propped himself up on an elbow and prodded ad Chris’s side. “Hey, look at me.”

There were too many maybes in all the scenarios Chis had run though his head, the slow forming scars shiny and pink on his forearm were all too real reminders of what could have happened, what could happen to Zach. All the same, he looked up at him, meeting the impossibly dark eyes edging on black in the dim light seeping in from the window.

“You’ve helped me skin the bears, wolves, and lynxes I’ve brought home. You know that I know not to try to out run a wolf. I’ll be back. A fortnight, just two weeks, just like I said.” His voice was firm, assured and ready as always to prove Chris wrong. “Trust me.”

Chris just nodded, shifting his body to face Zach as they settled back into their bed. Zach was out in only a few moments, a snuffling quiet snore he would never admit to already overtaking the sound of his heartbeat in Chris’s ear. Shifting yet again up the length of his housemate’s body, Chris studied Zach’s face. He was so peaceful like this, dark brown eyelashes twitching as he dreamt. Chris paused, his lips only a hairsbreadth away from where the deep brown whiskers faded into the ruddy skin of Zach’s neck, his next words spoken like a desperate prayer before kissing them into his skin.

“Don’t leave me.”


	5. Chapter 5

Chris was bent over again, tilling away for the production of potatoes and peppers in his garden.

It was quiet in a terribly deafening way. Skunk was harassing chattering squirrels, Harold was purring and lazily sun bathing, birds were greeting the day with songs and hymns, and the forest was breathing with the sound of a thousand ecosystems alive with a vibrant vivaciousness. It made him feel anonymous in all the vastness, made him confront his insignificance, which was a feeling he enjoyed to the fullest extent typically.

As a prince no one tells you how insignificant you are and there is nothing to remind you that the little ants marching on the ground could never truly be yours. The Queen and all her Court could order about the rabbits and they would pay them no mind. It didn’t matter, he didn’t matter, and the thought of fading into that obscurity was infinitely calming.

But not today. It was odd how you get used to the presence of another after your survival is built around the steady universe you created. Chris felt like he had fallen out of orbit, a little dazed and lopsided, unable to really get a focus on anything at all. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Zach had left him with a list of things that needed to get done, bundling the furs he had left, shelling nuts, patching up the garden fence, and a slew of things that seemed easy in theory but with his mind elsewhere he found himself unable to accomplish much at all. He wanted to write, to read, to do something that took his mind off how Zach didn’t even wake him up before he left. Zach had become his universal constant that abruptly wasn’t constant anymore.

“That’s not right.” Chris sighed and looked at the knot he was supposed to be working on. It wasn’t right, the knot wasn’t right, he wasn’t right, and Zach wasn’t right. It wasn’t okay to just leave when Chris had just gotten used to the push and pull of living with another human in the ear splitting silence of the forest. The worst part was is that he didn’t have Katie to talk about it with. She always had a special talent of analyzing whatever Chris was feeling and making it make sense.

He ended up just lying in the dirt, looking up at the unbearably bright blue sky, knowing it would piss Zach off the most. He couldn’t figure out why he was so upset, it really wasn’t that big of an issue. Zach was leaving before daybreak, surely it was courteous to let Chris remain sleeping instead of waking him. It was his own fault for having all the senses of a dead horse when asleep. He considered for a moment just how dead to the world he was for Zach to disentangle, get out of bed, get dressed, gather his belongings, and leave with Noah without waking him. The thought concerned him a little about his safety while unconscious. He groaned and rubbed his face harshly.

“I just don’t understand.” Chris explained to the weaving Harold as he cooked dinner on the hearth that evening. “It’s not like I’m helpless and he left you here by yourself last time he went out. All I’m saying is that it doesn’t make any sense that I wasn’t able to go along.”

“Besides,” Chris continued later as he sharpened the cooking and hunting knives. “I was fully expecting to have to make a dozen excuses to not have to go. Obviously I can’t go into town I’d be recognized in an instant by one of the guards. Not that Zach knows that.” He huffed and looked down at the cat for some semblance of as answer, only getting an uninterested green stare.

Chris rolled into bed for the first time without Zach in weeks and tried to tell himself that the reason the curling sense of dread resided in his stomach was that the wolf was out there and so was Zach.

∙∙∙

Chris was only somewhat bored in the first week, and quickly decided to throw himself into his duties as a good housemate to distract himself to whatever was going on in his head. The problem with manual work when you’ve been raised with having lessons daily, the work is just that. Manual. As in only using your hands and leaving your brain free to work and roll over exactly what he was trying not to think about.

He didn’t like how accustomed his body had gotten to his routine with Zach, the subtle touches, the whatever the hell was going on each night in that bed, and most of all the ignoring in the river.

Why would Zach have the urge to protect Chris’s modesty? Chris had been dressed and changed his entire life by a servant boy and he really didn’t see the difference. Not that Zach was a servant boy to him, no.

He shook his head and sighed, Zach was not under him in class or rank or anything really. Chris was not a prince anymore, he was a faceless participant in this vast forest. If anything, Zach was a higher class than him if he looked at this life he had been leading since he had returned home as a caste system.

Zach owned the home, fed him, gave him the knowledge to help contribute by gardening or mixing the ointments or bottling this and that for storage, and even brought him into his own bed when he could have just as easily had him sleeping on the floor.

Chris looked up at the sky, too caught up in his musings to realize exactly how close to dark it had gotten. He whistled for Skunk who came bounding out of the dense trees with a rabbit limp and grotesquely flopping in his jaws with each step. He tried to give it to Chris, dropping it at his feet and nosing it towards him. “No, I’m fine Skunk. You can keep it.” He chuckled and pet the dog’s head fondly as they both headed inside.

“Zach isn’t going to be happy with the state of all this when he gets home.” Chris looked around, he wasn’t particularly a clean person. Not that he was allowed to clean, but there should be some kind of preemptive cleaning going on to keep things from getting this bad.

Zach might actually be angry with how much of a complete mess he had made. He wondered what it would be like to have a row with Zach if he was really angry, little spats were common in such tight living quarters, but a full on argument would be odd. He had never thought of him in a violent manner, with that cupcake of a grin, even when the intensity of those eyebrows.

He just took bread and cheese with a little beer for dinner, too out of it to really focus on what he was cooking. Harold curled up in his lap, duly falling asleep there even as Chris gave him little pieces of bread. Skunk whined and tried to butt Harold to the side so he could lay his head in Chris’s lap as well. Harold was either a deep sleeper like himself or was adamant not to give Skunk the satisfaction.

Breaking rules seemed to the theme of this time without Zach and breaking the no pets in the bed rule was a great way to end the first week. He let the little menaces curl up with him as night fell outside, Harold planted stubbornly right in his personal face space and Skunk curled up in the crook of his knees. He couldn’t sleep.

The thing was Chris hadn’t been able to get someone out his head like this since Iris, his very secret and very lovely girl who just so happened to be the royal blacksmith’s only daughter. He had seen her a few times about the castle and been completely taken with her.

Her hair was that bleach blonde that caught the sun just right, even when she was covered with the char of her mother’s forge. They had grown close fast, Chris abandoning his lessons to sneak off with her. Mostly Iris helped him with his reading and giving him books as tokens of her love, knowing his ravenous hunger for the written word. Laying in the sun talking about how it would be if they could be together, finding a piece of shade to get out of the rays when it got too hot only to be caught by the guards multiple times.

It was only few months past that they had been separated. Rumors spreading about Chris’s chastity or lack thereof was something his mother had not tolerated and there were too many stories circulating about just what a blacksmith’s daughter was doing in the shade with their Prince. The general conclusion was that he had been tainted, by a commoner no less. Which would make his betrothal difficult.

Zach was nothing like Iris. The biggest difference obviously between his legs, the other between his ears. Zach thought differently, not that Iris was dim, but it seemed as if Zach functioned outside of the construct Chris had been functioning in his entire life.

Men were supposed to be beautiful, dumb, and admired, not heard. Zach was beautiful, anyone could see that, but not in conventional sense of the word. His swarthy, lithe form was not prized where Chris’s own stockier form was favored among the Court’s fleeting inclinations. He was strong and outspoken, using his muscles for his survival practically instead of for the enjoyment of a woman. Zach was everything his society was built on smiting from existence.

The thing was that he hardly knew anything of the man. He knew how he liked his dinner, he was left handed (sign of unholiness), he laughed for far too long when Chris mentioned the whole unholiness thing, and all of his weird little quirks. Chris didn’t know shit about his family, his past, how he ended up in this cabin, and to be honest it bothered him. It gnawed on him, that he was beginning this new chapter of his life with someone who was a perfect stranger. His family name, Quinto, was not recognizable to Chris as being among the Court which was not exactly surprising.

He sighed, consequently breathing in a lungful of cat hair and began dying slowly as he tried to refrain from coughing in a futile effort not to disturb his bedmates.

A sure sign of madness taken over him to reduce his own quality of living for the sake of his sleeping pets. As he lay dying and swallowing down Harold’s hair he tried not to think about Zach in terms of his likeness to Iris. He just missed him something awful because he was the only human he’d had contact with in the past month.

Why was this happening?

∙∙∙

It happened. Chris squirmed in the bed, flipping onto his back as rough, work calloused hands smoothed down his stomach. Every small slope of these newly defined muscles being mapped as if this was the only chance they would get to touch where only the sun had been allowed to kiss.

Zach’s heavy breath in his ear, finally slicking up and slowly rutting their bodies together. Chris couldn’t see much in the darkness that shrouded them in their bed, his arms clutching around Zach’s shoulders as he pressed his hips up to meet each oil slicked thrust, but he could smell him. God, he could smell him and came so hard he woke up with his face buried in Zach’s pillows.

Chris didn’t get anything done all day, his head fuzzy and out of focus. Maybe he was just pent up or maybe he was confusing the casual touches of their relationship as something more.

Either way the main consensus of all the thoughts running through his head which ranged from lovely little daydreams he would only admit to having under threat of the sword to the eternal damnation of his very Catholic soul, was:  _oh fuck_.

He only had a half of a week to get it under control before not only would his bed not be just his anymore, but his dreams as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to say thank you to the response to this. This is my first fic and I appreciate the feedback. Thank you all very much and I hope you enjoyed this chapter.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A certain someone got on my ass about updating.

Chris put his best effort into cleaning the day before Zach came home, just to lessen the initial impact of the mess he had managed to create during his absence. Harold followed on his heels, often climbing up his trouser leg to be carted around on Chris’s shoulder to pounce and bat at his shaggy hair. He really needed to cut it, but he never seemed to have the time. It had begun to cling to his neck with the sweat the summer heat had forced upon him.

The light summer sheets were kicked to the end of the bed, both Skunk and Harold had abandoned him for a cooler sleeping venue, and he could feel the sweat clinging to his eyebrows. He may have nearly shaved them off in the middle of the night if he wasn't too hot to even think about moving a centimeter.

The heat, it had to be the heat, that was the reason he couldn't sleep. Just the heat.

Zach was coming home in the morning.

He didn’t look that different when Chris spotted him walking up what could possibly be called a path. He was a little dirtier, hauling more winter supply bags than furs and salted meats, but for the most part he was just as hairy and oddly dressed as always.

He was beautiful with Noah bounding at his heels, coming home to him.

There was something in Zach that never made him look nice. Maybe it was deep seeded in his bone structure, a fine art that Chris just couldn't put his finger on. Art never made him feel good, but it made him feel something.

Zach made him feel something. He just wasn’t sure what that something was, all he knew was that it was definitely sin.

It was a similar something to what he felt when Noah knocked him flat on his back when they got home, breathless, dizzy, and the jolt of falling. The mutt breathed his wretched doggy breath all over Chris’s face as he gave him an ‘I missed you’ kiss. Zach smelled just as awful as Noah but skipped the face licks.

Chris was left to marinate in the memory of what he said before he left, what he had done, and tried to figure out if maybe there had been a line that was crossed that had expanded into a chasm in their break from each other.

He mostly just tried to concentrate on not hovering about him, caught in his orbit again. When he walked to the river with Noah bounding at his side he didn’t offer Chris an invitation or a backwards glance. He came back damp and just silent as he had arrived, only cleaner.

Chris sat through dinner chewing on his lips to keep from mauling Zach with questions. He picked over his dinner, scraping his spoon along the bowl and awkwardly toying with the rim of his glass. Fidgeting, he was fidgeting, and Zach didn’t even give him the benefit of an upward glance. The dogs could feel the silence and kept it sacred even as he tried to illicit a bark from Skunk with a pinch of meat out of his soup.

When Zach was clothed and full of warm soup he finally wrapped Chris up in a tight hug that made him feel more like he was being suffocated than greeted, and he squeezed back, and there he felt a change in that close embrace, a shift.

“So how was town?” Chis asked and the heaviness laying between them softened and he wasn’t exactly sure how he felt about that weight being lifted.

Zach let go first, pulling away to get the dogs ready for night. A tight lipped, tense air lay between them still and Chris wondered if Zach could see the change in him. Although, he supposed it wasn’t a change, just a realization.

His realization that perhaps it was possible for him to love both Zach and Iris, men and women, and that maybe it was okay for him to be that way here out of the sheltered shadow of his position. It was okay to be himself here away from the eye of an expecting Court and a duty that he had turned his back on. He was here with Zach and perhaps there was a reason for that. Mostly everything buzzing around his head was guesswork at this point, but he did know that he had to find a way to tell Zach. He couldn’t let himself weasel out of this, it was too important. Zach was too important.

Besides, he couldn’t just ignore it. They were in a living and sleeping situation together for an undefined amount of time. Then again, it could just be his mind focusing and obsessing itself around a single thought and convincing him that he was having feelings. He licked over his lips, sucking on the torn up skin of the lower, maybe he wasn’t noticing something blatant.

“It went as expected. I did get you something though. I know your birthday is coming up.” Zach whistled for bed time and Skunk immediately jumped up on the bed. Zach raised his eyebrow at Chris for an explanation. “Last time I checked the bed was an off limit space for dogs.”

“Do you have any idea how big that bed is when you’re sleeping alone?” Chris rolled his eyes and turned to clear away their dishes while Zach picked up Skunk and hauled him into what he had begun to refer to as the doggie room privately.

“Trying to defend yourself with a guilt trip, Christopher? I would have thought you could do better than that.” Zach chuckled when he returned, and Christ the sound made Chris’s chest feel heavy. “And as a matter of fact I do. I used to have the bed to myself until I found an insane, bleeding man under it who then proceeded to make himself at home.”

“Look, if you-“

“Do you want your present or not? Come on.” Zach cut him off and folded his legs as he sat on the bed, a small wooden box in his lap.

“It’s not my birthday yet. I’m still eighteen, August isn’t for another fortnight. 7th day before Kalends of September, remember?” Chris shook his head but clambered onto the bed anyway, far be it from him to refuse presents when they were so few and far between.

“You’re right. I am being too generous in my old age.” Zach teased, hesitating only for a moment before pressing the box into Chris’s waiting palms. “There’s another that you’ll get on the real day but I expect this fulfills more urgent a need than that gift.”

Chris let Zach ramble on, focusing only on the little clasp inlaid in the lacquered wood. He opened it to find a small reading stone.

Chris knew that spectacles were the recent fashion but those never caught his eye. He preferred the feeling of the cool stone in his hand, gliding it over the page as he read. The spectacles were nothing but reading stones placed within metal frames and held less of the finesse that Chris looked for in his reading experience.

“This can’t have been easy to come by.” It was not as large or mounted in silver as the one he left forgotten in his chambers, but it was mounted nonetheless to be a pendant to be worn around his neck. He smiled, knowing the small jab at his own forgetfulness.

“It was only difficult to find because you are too stubborn to wear spectacles like the rest of the world.” Zach said with disdain. “Turn around and let me do the clasp.”

Chris let him have this, even though the chain was big enough to slip over his head. He felt warm, work roughened fingers drag over the nape of his neck, leaving gooseflesh in their wake. He tried to will his skin to behave, squinting angrily as if he could scold his own flesh into minding. The fingers did not pause. They only trekked on and worked on the tiny clasp.

Zach had been weird since he had come home and far be it from Chris to point it out until he couldn’t keep his mouth closed any longer. He liked to think that he had more self-control than that though. Maybe Zach was just tired from his journey, maybe he had heard something in town.

Maybe he had heard something about him in town.

Something along the lines of a blond, blue eyed, prince named Christopher who had gone missing. The worrying thoughts crashed through Chris’s mind, dragging all the way down to settle in the pit of his stomach, blotting out any semblance of coherent thought and upsetting his dinner as he tried to control his expression before Zach finally managed to clasp the damn necklace.

There was no way he knew, there was no way he would go without saying anything when he came back. Zach was head to toe a pillar of authenticity and the apostle of living for who you are and the duty that came with. Absolutely no way that he found out without hauling Chris back to his duties and to face the punishment, come what may.

Zach pushed his hair out of his face, tapping Chris on the shoulder for him to turn around. He shifted on the bed a little to face him and before dropping his eyes at the sudden heavy silence. There was still something off in his house mate’s smile, but Chris put it out of his mind for the time being, because that was obviously the best way to deal with this problem.

∙∙∙

Watching Zach work made Chris curious. He spent his mornings making a new winter coat for Chris and when he wasn’t partaking in his seamstress duties he was crafting a new bow. There was little doubt in his mind now that Zach certainly had the finger skills necessary for the act.

The act that had been consuming Chris’s mind ever since his pleasurably abhorrent dream and if he was completely honest, before he had even come to this cabin. 

There had once been a beautiful kitchen boy with dark hair and smooth hands that Chris had some time getting to know when he was young and growing through his first growth spurt. His bare feet knew the cool stones of the servants’ stairs well and his lips knew the warmth of Doran’s with greater admiration. That was nothing more than physical though and this thing was Zach was utterly attached to his heart in an inconvenient way.

That was before he knew that men could be with men in any way, long before he heard rumors about how it might be done. He had since been distracted as his kitchen boy was married off and he gained his first girlfriend, a visiting Vicar with questionable duties toward the morals her bishop upheld. 

“I can feel you staring.” Zach deadpanned, looking up at Chris’s not so covert peeks at him from the bed. He dropped his quill, making sure he did not blot his journal parchment with spare ink before feigning indignation.

“I am not staring. I am simply curious to know how you learned to sew so well.” His tutor had tried to teach  him how to sew but it had never taken hold in his mind. He was much better at sneaking off to the kitchens for a midnight snack or into the library for a book that would not be missed.

“Your flattery falls on deaf ears.” Zach smirked and looked down to continue his sewing. The coat truly looked fantastic despite Zach’s assurances that it was crafted only in the name of practicality and not for beauty or design, which were promptly discarded as an extreme falsehood by Chris privately. “My mother taught me.”

Chris’s ears perked up at that. He had almost never spoken of his family, and although Chris never blamed him seeing as he never spoke of his family either, he was undoubtedly curious. He was debating with questioning further when Zach spoke again, almost laughing.

“Joe was always shit at it. He’d rather be out with the dogs, climbing trees, and acting foolish. What could she do though? Cursed with two boys and nothing to entice good marriage prospects. She let him live in his freedom while it could last.” Chris thought Zach had forgotten him and was just rambling to himself until dark brown eyes snapped up to him, expecting something that Chris wasn’t sure he could just hand over.

“I have an older sister and my hand was of some want. I am positive it has declined in value since I last checked. Living in a cabin with another man and doing all his dirty work tends to degrade the value of ones maidenhead.” He wanted to kick himself for making a joke when Zach was opening up about his family, but he direly needed to get off of the subject of his own.

“Your maidenhead?” It was Zach’s turn to be taken aback apparently, his eyebrows had gotten lost up his forehead into his hair which was not an easy feat for the thick caterpillars. “A virgin. You’re a virgin?”

“I’m a man, of course I am. My value is in my virtue?” Chris’s brow furrowed, all the men he knew were virgins except for the married or kept men of the Court.

Chris ought to have known to lie, the wolfish look on Zach’s face was not comforting in the least. He had never actually seen that look on Zach’s face before. He fell silent and was caught there, held by a single look as Zach carefully set down his needle and thread


	7. Chapter 7

“I think that’s enough for the day.” Zach said, suddenly changing the subject as he folded the coat carefully in his arms before placing it out of the reach of Harold’s clawing wrath. Chris got whiplash from the sudden change in mood, the wolfish grin replaced by a contorted mask. “I am going to gather some wood.”

He reached past Chris to where surely the ugliest hat in the entire realm rest on the bed. Chris was halved with the procession of events.

He was glad that he had an opportunity to snoop in things he could not have without his reading stone, but he also wanted to know where that grin had disappeared to. Before he could protest or find his own hat to tag along on the venture, Zach was out the door with both dogs yipping and scuttling at his feet as if he could not get out of the cabin fast enough.

Chris waited until he could no longer hear Zach’s heavy footsteps, peeking out to see if he was still close, piddling about the cabin while he waited through the usual time period Zach returned had he forgotten something. Harold watched him with squinting, suspicious eyes, as if the feline knew what Chris was so obviously trying to talk himself out of doing.

Glancing around like an idiot, as if all of the sudden there would be someone around to catch him prying where he ought not. The heaviness of solitude and guilt did not keep him from wriggling right back where Zach had found him on the first day they had met.  The mystery of Zach’s many mood swings could wait until he was done playing secret intelligence.

Really, he deserved whatever was coming for putting it in the same spot after getting the nosy blond a reading stone, or at least that’s what Chris told himself as he pulled himself back out from under the bed. His operation couldn’t have been going smoother until a large, heavy THWACK hit his back. He jumped half out of his skin, hitting his head on the thick, wooden frame of the bed.

“Ouch! Jesus fucking Christ Zachary, is it really worth head tra-“ He finally shimmied out from the crevice to look at a smug cat. “Fuck you too, Harold. See if I give you scraps anymore.” Harold just leaped up on the bed, indifferent to Chris’s idle threats.

The journal and the box lay heavily on the bed, the sheet indented around them while Chris’s hands paused, hesitating to open what he knew were Zach’s most private possessions. He remembered a time when he had held the leather bound book in his hands almost every day, wondering what secrets it held within that were just out of his eyesight. He recalled fretting over whether the owner would ever come home or if they had perished and left a man they did not even know, to starve in their home.

No, not their. She. He had thought Zach was a she. Coming from a world where the he was subservient to the she, he could have never imagined this property, this home would belong to a he.  That a he would be happy, would flourish without a she to care for him and keep him safe. No, that Chris was not the same Chris that sat on this bed. So why was he about to betray the only he in his life that could ever hold any place in his heart?

Perhaps, that was why he was doing it. He had to know what Zach was keeping so private and locked away. He gave the excuse to satisfy the voice screaming in his head about how generous Zach had been to him. He had clothed, fed, and sheltered Chris and what does he do? He goes through his intimate personal things.

“He could be hiding anything, What if he’s a murderer?” Chris argued with Harold’s damning looks. “What could he be hiding that he can’t tell me?”

You mean like how you’re hiding your identity from him? His conscience argued back with him since Harold was lacking in the ability to voice his contempt.

“I just have to.” The words fell flat, a justification that even he didn’t believe as he opened the box first.

The first few items seemed of only sentimental value. On top of the piles of parchment and a dried crown of flowers and ribbons was anot aged, but impeccably cared for skinning knife, simple and stout. Its leather was worn and when Chris tried to take it in his hand, the indention of its previous owner’s fingers refused him, making the grip awkward and unsteady. He set it carefully on the bed along with the brittle crown. A slim silver needle fell into his lap when he held the first of the parchments in his hand, careful not to lose it in the sheets he set it with the other items.

He slowly unfolded the creases, taking great care not to touch the slowly appearing charcoal that formed a face. It was a face he definitely recognized although Zach had certainly grown into his features since this had been drawn. It was hardly rudimentary, the skill level was past what Chris had seen with his sister’s drawing tutor. Picture after picture was of Zach in different positions, some only half finished and some only of his hands until he came to eyes he did not recognize. He assumed the following drawings and sketches were of Zach’s family.

A much smaller dog than either Noah or Skunk made a few appearances in the charcoal pictures, and one there was a small doll. He watched Zach’s mother age slowly in the drawings, her features gaining lines in her kind face, curly hair becoming less darkened. The man never aged though, he stayed abruptly the same age until blinking out of existence entirely.

He wondered what happened to the man. He was so obviously Zach’s dad it was hard to look at, the thick brows were a dead giveaway but the resemblance was more in the steady gaze even if it did not hold the darkened irises Zach’s did. No, Zach definitely had his mother’s eyes.

The drawings had been emptied and now all that was left in the box was a stack of what appeared to be letters held together by a thin, aged hemp string. Plucking at the strong with gentle fingers, Chris finally got the stubborn thing undone although it did not seem like it had been untied for some time. His eyes skimmed over the letters, his reading stone placed delicately to the ink stained words before an overwhelming blush consumed him.

These were letters from a lover. Inside the first were worn, dried petals of spring flowers, sprigs of rosemary, parsley, and thyme. Their fragrance still steeped deep into the parchment. He held the aged letters to his face to breathe deeply, inhaling the scent of what true love assuredly would smell like if it were animated into a being. Perhaps, the aroma was what a witch’s love potion might smell of.

_Zachary,_

_The last time we were together I am afraid I made the grave offense of not admitting to you the true intent concerning what commenced between both body and soul._

_It was not my intent to simply forge what may be considered an abomination in the sight of God, for surely you must know it holds no consequence for me what God concerns herself with. The toils of men are beneath her and what does her word say of men with men? It says naught, only that woman should not lie with woman as she does with man. What does the man have to fear from this God that sees us as chattel to be bought and sold?_

_But all these endeavors to win you over have proved useless; grief, I perceive, has wholly seized your spirits, and your prudence, far from assisting, seems to have forsaken you. But my loyal friendship has found out a way to relieve you._

_Attend to me a moment, hear me Zachary. Ours will be nothing as compared with those of the misfortune of the men we have heard of in the past. Observe, I beseech you, at what expense I endeavor to serve you; and think this no small mark of my affection. I love you, surely you must know that, my dear. Surely, you must hold this knowledge in your heart._

_Perhaps I am thoroughly wretched; I have not yet torn from my heart the deep roots which vice has planted in it. I do not wish it. I will not. Zachary, I beg of you do not turn from me. I would not survive it. Write to me soon._

_By a peculiar power love can make that seem life itself which, as soon as the loved object returns, is nothing but a little canvas and flat charcoal. I have your picture that your talented brother gave me with generosity in my room; I never pass it without stopping to take pleasure in viewing it; and yet when you are present with me I scarce ever cast my eyes on it. If a drawing, which is but a still, flat resemblance of an object, can give such true and whole feeling, what cannot letters give?_

_They have heart; they can speak; they have inside them all that words which such terrible might expresses the passages of the heart; they have all the consuming ardor of our passions._

_We may write to each other; so innocent a pleasure is not denied us. Let us not lose through neglect the only happiness which is left us, and the only one perhaps which the malice of our enemies can never ravish from us._

_Giles_

 

A man. Giles was a man’s name.

He had to admit he was a little jealous of this Giles. He squinted at the pages and decided that he had to copy down some of the quotes when he had more time to spend with the letters. He doubted his work could ever compare to the pure poetry this man had spun into an aching love letter.

Chris scrambled for the next letter putting aside his writer’s jealousy for a moment, his eyes devouring the words, watching the relationship grow and expanded into flowery words of devotion and love from an odd one sided perspective.

There were plots of running away, declarations of hatred toward God and toward even their closest friends for not understanding, tear smudged letters of pure, haunting, hollow aching they felt apart from the other. Chris could feel his own tears well as he read the letters, the sheet desperation making his body ache with need to help these lovers and yet, an odd completely abhorrent glee that Chris held knowing their relationship had fallen to nothingness. And suddenly that’s all there was. Nothing. No more letters from this mystery Giles even as his last letter declared they would never be parted.

Chris frowned, no there had to be something else. There had to be another letter, but search as he may he could not find it in the empty corners of the box. He checked and rummaged through the empty air, surely there must be another, but the box was done giving Chris Zachary’s secrets.

However, there lay a leather bound journal that had not offered anything thus far in Chris’s excavation of Zach’s past. It lay cripplingly dense in his lap. He had come this far, he could not retreat now. He should have stopped, should have saved it for another day or perhaps given Zach what little he had left of his privacy back unmolested. He did not. He opened the journal to the first page and pressed his now warmed reading stone to the page, prepared to take yet more of what had never been offered to him.

“Christopher. What exactly do you think you’re doing?”


End file.
